


Twelve Potions and a Sword

by CommonEvilMastermind



Series: Lavellan Solos A Dragon [2]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, In which there is an excessive amount of guilt and gnashing of teeth, Reaver Lavellan - Freeform, Solas POV, Warrior Lavellan - Freeform, poor Solas, poor coping mechanisms, really - Freeform, soloing dragons is bad break up therapy okay, you dumbass
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-22
Updated: 2016-11-22
Packaged: 2018-09-01 10:28:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8620957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CommonEvilMastermind/pseuds/CommonEvilMastermind
Summary: Lavellan goes to solo a dragon and Cole tells Solas all about it. Dragon: Solas POV





	

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to rpglvr, the best beta who has ever been. They wrote this, i just did the words thing.

“Solas?” Cassandra calls, sticking her head into his rotunda. “Where is the Inquisitor?”

“I am unsure.” He turns a page of his book. “We returned from Crestwood separately.”

Cassandra does not say anything for a long moment. He feels her watching him from the door. “…I see,” she says, and he notes the concern in her voice. “Is she alone?”

Guilt twists in his stomach. “She is.”

“We have many forces in Crestwood. She is in no danger.” Cassandra shifts in the doorway. “I will see if Leliana has heard anything from her scouts.”

He does not answer. He stands at his desk, examining a book. He does not remember the title. He does not think he had absorbed a single word of it.

Cassandra does not answer. She left him alone.

He will always be alone.

He feels… raw. Scraped open wide, gutted and sick. The loss of her was staggering. The loss of her is – No. He had made his decision. There is no return.

He has to focus. Time is growing short.

In direct opposition to this goal, Cole appears on his desk, knocking several books and at least one priceless artifact to the stone floor below.

“Cole,” he says, more roughly than he had meant to.

“Gray,” Cole babbles, and his eyes are wide under his hat. “Gray and numb and cold, have to fight. Have to remember. Fire and heat and light and life. Have to remember.”

“Cole…”

“Gentle, broken words break a gentle, broken heart. I am not a lover, I was not made to love. Twelve potions and a sword.”

Realization sinks, a stone in his gut. “Cole,” he breathes with a patience he does not feel. “Are you talking about the Inquisitor?”

“Broken in the moonlight, kisses and tears, lover’s things. I am not a lover, I will not be broken. A sword and twelve potions. I am many things but none of them are stupid – but she is, she is, we fought one all together, she’s not together, she’s alone, Solas, she’s alone!”

“What is it, Cole?” he snaps, grabbing the spirit boy by the shoulders. “Where is she, what is she doing?”

Cole looks up, and the blue of his eyes is swallowed by fear. “She is going to fight a dragon.”

No.

Please, no.

For a long moment, all he can feel is his heart in his chest. His heart. His vhenan. Please, no.

Then reality breaks and he is halfway up the stairs to the library, shouting at the top of his lungs. “LELIANA!” he bellows, knowing it is futile, knowing there is nothing to be done, it is his fault, his fault she had gone to die- “LELIANA?”

“Solas?” Leliana leans over the balcony as Solas sprints past Dorian, who squawks. “What has happened?”

“Your agents, the – you need to mobilize your agents in Crestwood immediately, as fast as you possibly can.” Around the curve of the library, damn this rotunda layout. He flies up the stairs fast, not fast enough.

Leliana’s work table brings him to a sudden halt. The spymaster is there, tense as a drawn bow. “What-?”

He sucks in a deep breath. “The Inquisitor has gone to fight a dragon.”

Silence falls in the library. Leliana blinks, and he can see the pieces fitting together. Leliana knows. He can see she understood, can see by the way that she sucks air in, by the haunted look on her face, one followed by anger, then a perfect mask of cool professionalism.

“How much time do we have?” she says, gesturing to her spies and assistants. Bless Leliana.

“I-” that is a good question. “Cole!”

From underneath the table, Cole makes a small, frightened noise. Spirits do not do well with linear time.

“Cole,” Solas says, more gently.

“It’s happening, it will happen. I can hear it so loud. Solas, why is she so loud?”

“Because you love her.” He does not recognize his own voice. “Because she needs help.”

“Can Cole not go to her?” Leliana says, scribbling on small pieces of parchment.

Cole makes a distressed sound. Solas unclenches his fists with intentional effort and kneels down to lay a hand on the boy-spirit’s knee. “He cannot go great distances in the Fade, not with the Breach pulling spirits through against their will. He cannot, and should not dare to try.”

“But I could-!” Cole says, voice edging to a wail. “I could help-”

“No,” says Solas. And, surprisingly, Leliana.

“We need you here, Cole,” Leliana says, in a kinder tone than Solas could remember her using. “We need you to help us find her.”

“The Northern Hunter,” Cole whispers. “Past Three-Trout Farm.”

Leliana, paler, gestures for crows to be brought. She attaches messages, three, four, to different birds and throws them out of the open window with little ceremony.

“These are just insurance,” Leliana reassures. “My agents are not fools. They will have seen her.”

“She smiled at me like a demon,” Cole mutters. “I thought I was going to die.”

“They will go after her,” Leliana says. “She will be well.”

“And if she is not, the whole of Skyhold will know of it.” Dorian walks up the stairs, face set. “Do you intend to keep reporting, Cole?”

“I-”

“It is all right, Cole,” Solas murmurs, feigning calm. “We will move to someplace more private.”

“Yes,” Leliana agrees, still scribbling on small pieces of paper. “And you will tell us when help reaches her.”

“She can always run if she is overwhelmed,” Dorian adds. “She’s not _stupid_.”

“A sword and twelve potions,” Cole whispers.

Solas closes his eyes.

~*~

It’s just the two of them, walking through the stone corridors of the fortress where he once tore down the world. He is walking. Cole is muttering and pacing and taking short hops through the Fade, jerking back and forth through reality.

“It hurts,” the spirit tells him, and his voice is tinged with despair, with wonder. “She loves you. Why did you take it away? She wouldn’t have stopped.”

Solas’ hands fumble at the key. “It is. It is not easy to explain, Cole.”

“You were afraid,” Cole accuses, biting, and the anger from the sweet, kind spirit is a lash on his skin. “You could have trusted her.”

“It is not so simple, Cole,” he says. Anger is rising, hot and bitter in his throat. Anger such he has not felt since-

He closes his eyes and counts with his breathing, the ancient elvhen numbers worn thin with use over time. Acknowledges the anger. Allows it to pass.

Allows it to pass.

Allows-

“The air smells like dragon,” Cole whispers and Solas snaps the key in the lock. The metal of the latch melts under his hands and he’s inside, they’re inside his small room. It’s him and Cole. No one else who has to hear-

“She remembers. Like a hunt. Hunter, not prey, never prey, not my head, not my heart. I hunt, and the grass is dry and dead and the air smells like dragon-” Cole blinks and turns to Solas and his eyes are blown wide. “This was a bad idea.”

“Foolish,” Solas curses and he paces what he can, two, three strides across his tiny room that holds a bed and little else. His hands are clenched behind his back so tightly he can hear the knuckles creak. “Foolish, stupid, melodramatic-”

“No!” Cole screams, sinks to the floor, sinks so fast and Solas is there, catches him, holds him in his arms. “Lightning, spitting, shakes the ground, so small, I can’t, I can’t, can’t die, won’t die, survive. Faster than thought, duck, block, weight of the sword, ah! Ah!”

“Cole!” Solas shouts, tries not to shake him, this small, good spirit. It is not Cole’s fault that he is here, here alone, trapped in a stone prison of his own making while his heart, his heart, he has left his heart broken-

“It burns.” Cole’s face shines. “It is _glorious._ ”

His heart was quiet, reserved, calm. A creature of diplomacy and grace. But the battle-lust runs through her veins like a hot sickness – she grins and she burns and armies fall, screaming, at her feet. She lets herself free and she is a wild and feral thing, more beautiful draped in blood than in any measure of silks or lace. She is violence, death made form, and he can almost see the rabid grin on her face, can almost hear her scream.

“Joints are weak, pebbled skin, sharp, my leg, hot pain, perfect, perfect. Lightning on my eyelids, no time for broken bones. Inside of the thigh-”

“Is she hurt?” Solas snaps, scrabbling frantically for the pool of calm inside him, the pool he built over millennia of training, of meditation, the pool, it’s gone, it’s empty, it’s drained and all there is fury, fury and fear and panic, he has never been so _helpless._

“She is so happy,” Cole whispers. “A place beyond pain.”

He has caused her so much pain.

Then Cole

Cole

Cole bucks back, a sound, that horrible gasp of breath being driven from the lungs, he has lived so long, seen so much war, he knows all the sounds of dying and that sound in the air, no, no, please no. No. Please.

Everything is very far away.

“Can’t breathe,” Cole says, weeping, the boy is weeping. “I failed. I _failed._ ”

“No.” The strangled sound falls from his lips. “No. _Vhenan._ ”

“One potion,” Cole breathes. “One potion.”

Please.

“I am not dead yet.”

_Vhenan._

“One potion and a sword.” Cole sits up, shaking. “A wall. Nice wall. You are not a nice dragon.”

Vhenan, run. Why do you not run? Why must you always keep fighting?

He realizes it, listening to her die.

She will never stop fighting.

And then Cole, brave Cole, sits up and takes a deep shuddering breath, filling his lungs and his face, his face is shining. “She did it,” the spirit breathes, awe, relief, wonder. “She killed the dragon.”

_Impossib-_

“How?” he says, strangled, and the only thing he can feel is his heart in his chest, beating, beating.

Cole grins. “It was a very nice wall.”

That makes about as much sense as anything in this crazy, twisted world.

But the bright grin crumples. “No, no no no no no!”

“Cole-!”

“She’s, she’s alive, she’s alive and she’s hurt, she’s hurt and she’s bleeding and she’s she’s falling, falling into the black but she’s still hurt, she can’t, Solas, she needs help! She needs help or she’s going to die!”

_No-!_

He’s on his feet and he’s tearing through the door, he’ll go, he’ll rip a new Breach in the Fade if he must, he must, he must get to her in time, he-

He collides into Dorian, who was standing outside the door, Dorian, listening, listening with Leliana and Cassandra and-

Dorian with a stone, glowing strong and blue, and talking, the stone is talking, swearing-

“We’re almost there,” says the stone in Bull’s voice, tight and breathless. “Oh, shit. Is she-?”

“The Iron Bull,” Cole says softly. “The Iron Bull, hurry! She’s alive!”

“Shit,” the crystal swears. Then, low and angry, “Someone kick Solas’ ass for me.”

All eyes flicker to his face.

He turns.

Walks away.

Cassandra calls, “Solas-” and it is not unkind.

“No,” says Dorian. “Let him go.”

He walks. Snow under his feet. Across the hidden trails and forgotten faces of the mountain. Walks until all he can hear is the wind, wailing bitterly against the stone.

He falls to his knees.

Then he starts to cry.


End file.
